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Tuesday, November 12th, 2013

Son Little Premieres Anti- Debut

“Cross My Heart,” the debut track from new ANTI- signing Son Little, is a box of bonbons filled with barbed wire. Over a deceptively slinky groove – shades of 70’s Marvin Gaye, Leon Ware – the singer croons, phrases emerging from the swelter, “sex and candy,” “gonna get me some:” a lover’s plea.

But the angular blues guitar lick over the top of the track is clue to a deeper, older invocation, as Son Little’s lyrics bear witness to two departed friends, and, inspired by Trayvon Martin, offer a meditation on the ease with which black lives are erased – even now, decades beyond the years when that smoky guitar line was invented. Son Little’s voice soars like a young Stevie Wonder’s as he testifies to his loss, and the “cross my heart” tag line reveals itself not as a lover’s plea, but a defiant prayer to remember the lost.

The track is accompanied by an atmospheric black-and-white video that evokes the smoky milieus of Lester Young and Billie Holiday, reinforcing the themes of the song in its references to lost greats.